This is something many people have always known. The popular cover girl model and movie star is not all she seems when presented by the media and marketed for one product or another. Heavy emphasis go into makeup, looks and then post production. With still photography, that means a trip to the nearest Macintosh computer and image alteration with Adobe Photoshop.

I’ve always known about this. Once upon a time many years ago I attended a demo for Photoshop version 3 or 4. There they had a photograph of super model Cindy Crawford. They showed us a video of what they did to her image after a photo shoot. They enhanced her skin, took a few sags off here and there, slimmed a few lines down and sharpened the image. This is all the standard stuff one can do with Photoshop and many other lessor known image editing programs.

Since that time I have always looked at modeling shots and advertising with a jaundiced eye. You should too. Be very skeptical about the images that are presented to you. Most of the time they will have been “photoshopped”.

As a photographer I edit my images all of the time, with either the older version of Photoshop that I own or with Apple’s own iPhoto software that allow me to do basic enhancements such as sharpening, color saturation, shadows and brightness. Many of the photos that I have on my Flickr photo stream are slightly enhanced with digital tools. Such is the power of the Macintosh computer and frankly many other platforms.